by H. T. Kofruk
“He knows how to operate it” said Bongani in impeccable Chinese while pointing at the Atlantic officer.
“What? What’s going on?” asked the bewildered officer suddenly fully acknowledging Bongani’s existence.
Two aliens marched forth to him and gestured to stand up. He nervously complied with trembling legs. He managed to look back at Bongani with a desperate expression. “What did you tell them?” he seethed.
“That you were more than open to inter-species sex!” was the reply, followed by Bongani’s raucous laughter.
“They want you to operate the wormhole creator” informed Heera.
As he was led to the control deck, the thin alien, Saj’ra, approached a star chart projection. With surprising dexterity, he managed to zoom into a quadrant at the point of one of the Yinhexi’s swirling arms. The projection then enlarged a sector, a zone and then a single system. With a final stroke of his hand, the projection showed a single planet with vast blue oceans and a single large reverse S-shaped continent that snaked from one pole to the other, covering about a third of the surface. The land was red in the south, predominantly yellow near the equator, and purple in the north. Heera immediately saw the source of the different shades of colour in the aliens’ skin.
“Bu-but that area of the Yinhexi hasn’t been mapped for decades. It’s Ch-Chinese t-territory and only they have the correct movement patterns of stars and p-planets” stammered the officer. Though of about average height, the officer was big-boned and burly, yet looked like a child with the aliens towering above him. The fact that his body-language was expressing extreme fear and nervousness didn’t help. “You could wormhole into a b-black hole or a supernova for all we know. Even if you didn’t, you might end up parsecs away”
Heera translated what was said. Bin’ja stood up and approached the star map and by reverse-mimicking Saj’ra’s hand gestures, enlarged the map to show the whole sector. While pointing a large, flat finger with pointed nails at a specific point in the map, he said “Zhèlǐ”. Here. Something in the way he said it forbade any argument or rebuttal. The Atlantic officer recorded the coordinates.
Bin’ja now turned to Bongani. “We need your ship.” The comment brought Bongani staggering to his feet. “You’ll need to kill me.” Terry could only smile at Bongani’s feistiness in the face of a figure that not only emanated authority, but also extreme strength. Surprising even himself, Terry stood between the aliens and Bongani and looking back, whispered “You can die another day, you faithless whore, but not today. Let them have the ship.”
“But David…”
“He’ll be fine. Tell him to come on board the station.”
Hesitating, Bongani did as Terry bid. After listening to quite a bit of David’s profanity, Bongani finally managed to persuade his partner.
Heera had just become aware of the stares coming from the Atlantic soldiers. An Atlantic military type, an Afrikan smuggler and a Pacific female? They certainly were an odd group. The soldiers stationed here possibly hadn’t seen a real live woman in months, except the senior officers and NCOs whose wives would be kept separately on a nearby planet or space station with their children. Even though the regular enlisted soldiers probably frequented the relaxation area where they would be kept company by superbly designed female holographs, or male as certain programs were hacked to project, the fact that a beautiful real woman was standing not fifteen feet from them had their hormones going wild. She suddenly felt vulnerable and stood nearer to Terry.
The grey-haired Atlantic officer opened up a docking port to which David attached his ship. The explosives specialist thought about booby-trapping the ship but then decided he couldn’t bear to see her damaged. He reluctantly came to the command centre, clad in an orange atmospheric suit. His eyes were wide with disbelief when he saw the aliens and the Renden prisoners, and they even seemed to open wider when he saw Bongani laying on the ground with dried blood around his mouth.
“McKay!” yelled Bongani towards the Atlantic general who suddenly became very interested in a star map. The other Atlantic soldiers looked with disdain at this Afrikan who called their general so casually. “Don’t ignore me you fat pig!” he shouted again.
One of the Atlantic soldiers, a short but wiry-fit looking second lieutenant with dirty blond hair, stood up and walked to where Bongani had just been joined by David. “How dare you address an Atlantic Alliance brigadier general in such a manner, you smuggling scum” he spat out. David turned and punched the young officer in the face so hard that he flew back as if his head was attached to a virulently pulled ripcord. The rest of the Atlantic soldiers stood up and looked as though they would make a rush at the Afrikan couple but for the deafening shriek made by the thin alien who had stood next to the alien leader. Everyone froze save Bongani who was laughing.
Terry was about to make for the general but then realized he was not in uniform and had no way to prove he was an Atlantic Alliance marine. They would probably think that he was just another ex-soldier who now resorted to smuggling or pirating. That could earn a swift execution.
“What the hell?” exclaimed the general identified as McKay.
All heads, both human and alien, turned towards the general and the holograph he was looking at. A large wormhole had opened, colouring the black space with green light.
“Did you open that?” asked Terry.
“Hell, no. It’s too big to be a communications wormhole. I think a ship’s arriving.”
The general’s prediction was only part right. As Rendens and Nikruk watched, a fleet of black ships materialized, the largest shaped like a dragon’s head with golden eyes.
Chapter 32: Lordsphere
‘Thirty thousand light years from Earth, we have found an Eden. God has willed us to find his jewel of the universe and it is for us to do his bidding. After two hundred years of searching, we have found an almost exact replica of our world near the centre of the galaxy. With your permission, we would like to grant it the name Lordsphere.’ – Captain Dennis L. Bowman of the IGN Genesis, discoverer of Lordsphere, on presentation to the Pope, Saint Francisco Victus, year 2620
“Is that OK, sir? I hope it’s not too tight” said the Sarraman medic while wrapping Rick’s arm with tissue-regeneration bandages.
Rick didn’t reply. The medic could see that the admiral was deep in thought. He was in fact looking at a One God nun who was helping some of the wounded. Lordsphere was home to the largest convent in the empire with some twenty thousand nuns. As soon as the fleet had returned from the mission, several Orcas had been sent with scores of nurse-trained nuns.
The nun he was looking at looked strikingly like Maria, despite her blonde hair and lighter complexion. She was the same build, had the same full lips and large eyes, even her long neck. But unlike Maria’s perpetual frown, the nun was smiling pleasantly.
You’ll never understand me, Papa, and I’ll never understand what you’ve become.
The last words his daughter said to him at her wedding felt like spikes in his gut, even after all these years. She had declared her love for an Afrikan, something unthinkable to him and everyone he worked with. He had been a lieutenant-colonel at the time, logistics officer on a destroyer.
Already disadvantaged by his skin colour, he was adamant that he wouldn’t suffer further setbacks in his career because of her choices. He consequently married her off to an English Marine Corps lieutenant, so sure that he had guaranteed her and her future children happiness. Two years later, she committed suicide by taking some sort of alien poison after what turned out to be a hellish life during which she was constantly beaten and abused by her monstrous husband. Rick did everything in his power to have him convicted and executed but the law heavily favoured men, especially in family matters. Rick learned a few years later that his former son-in-law had been killed in an ambush by alien militia.
By that point, however, Rick wasn’t happy or relieved after he had learned of the death. He blamed himself before anyone el
se of the premature departure of his beloved Maria. After his only son Antonio had died of gravity disease as a young army lieutenant, he finally broke down, quitting the navy and spending his days emptying bottle after bottle of cheap whisky and rum. Sick and tired of his guilt and depression, his wife left him, immigrating to Botswana where she would at least be able to openly be Mormon as her family secretly had been for generations. He thought about killing himself, but he found that he didn’t even have as much courage as Maria.
It was the navy that ultimately saved him. After two years of his distress and wandering, two naval officers somehow found him to offer a job as the number two on a new cruiser that was soon to be commissioned. Getting back into space was the catalyst that he needed, a reason to get his mind and body back in shape. Although deep down inside he hated the Atlantic Alliance military and all it stood for, he also loved it for the life it had given back to him.
“Sir?” carefully asked the medic whose face refocused.
“That’s fine, thank you, Corporal” replied Rick in a kindly voice.
They had lost two cruisers and four destroyers in the battle. Most of the crew from three of the ships had safely been transported in Orca carrier shuttles to the mothership or other ships close by. The shuttles that carried the crew of IGN Bane of Goliath, however, were all picked off by Chinese Phoenix fighters and drones except one. IGN Eden and IGN Resurrection were both boarded by Chinese troops, and through the holographs he saw for the first time the mysterious aliens in action. Though there were only glimpses of them in the holographs transmitted to the mothership, he was almost certain they were the culprits of the attack on Janpu. The way well-trained marines and sailors seemed to melt as they whizzed past in blurs of brown gave him the shivers.
Only three shuttles were able to escape from the two destroyers, after which the mothership IGN Virgin Mary fired its own nuclear weapons to destroy the two boarded Atlantic ships, lest the enemy get their hands on potentially sensitive information.
Two enemy cruisers tried to board the Atlantic mothership, shooting out hundreds of boarding pods. Luckily, Rick had sensed their motives and sent out the ship’s fleet of Tiger Shark fighters, along with a host of drones. Not a single pod survived the onslaught. The two enemy cruisers were also destroyed, one from two tactical nuclear missiles that ripped through its port side, the other after suffering concentrated pulse and laser cannon fire from the Atlantic mothership.
The enemy tactic was both confusing and worrying to Rick. Boarding another ship was dangerous and wasteful, usually only worth it if it was absolutely sure that the boarded ship was carrying valuable merchandise or intelligence. IGN Virgin Mary had neither. The swarms of Tiger Sharks and drones should have been enough to discourage such a tactic. The enemy cruisers, however, chose to launch their pods anyway, and the sub-optimal distance from the target Atlantic mothership meant that Atlantic fighters and drones had more than ample time to intercept them. Why were they so adamant about boarding the mothership? Was it just to test their new weapons again? The almost casual manner in which the Chinese threw away pods and the troops that populated them was unsettling.
What was even more unsettling was the swift action of the Chinese fleet. As soon as the wormhole through which the Atlantic fleet had exited had closed, the Chinese fleet appeared through another. For no other reason than gut feeling, Rick wasn’t surprised by their sudden appearance. Perhaps through confidence of their element of surprise, the enemy fleet neglected to protect the Chinese mothership, CIN Sun Tzu, which had taken a very aggressive forward stance as if to lead the fleet. Rick could tell his counterpart was probably quite young and anxious for glory. Keeping his own ship away from enemy, Rick ordered six of his eight cruisers to concentrate their attack on the unprotected Chinese mothership while the other vessels were to provide cover for them. A blocked nuclear missile was enough to take out its wormhole creator, and two more direct nuclear hits had the black and yellow Sun Tzu retreating.
The following tactic, however, took even Rick by surprise. The Chinese wormhole station that was the original target opened another wormhole, permitting two Chinese cruisers to enter. The wormhole exited right behind the Virgin Mary, from which the two cruisers attempted to board her after they exited. Only his crew’s incredible readiness saved them from being boarded. He made a mental note in his head to thank them for their preparedness which won them the battle. Although he lost a quarter of the fleet, he left the Chinese fleet two thirds destroyed and the Chinese wormhole station would be inoperable for months to come.
But when he had returned to Lordsphere, the de facto Atlantic outer space capital, things looked grimmer. Of the dozens of fleets that had left to attack their targets in Orthodox or Chinese territory, only a quarter had returned, and just over a third had respected the report intervals. Of the fleets that had returned, only one in two ships seemed to have survived. One thing that all returned fleets had in common was that the motherships’ survival. Without the motherships’ wormhole creator, the fleets were effectively cut off from Command.
It was for this reason that the Atlantic Alliance Department of Defence had been pushing for years to make two motherships per fleet mandatory. But the costs were unjustifiably high; though only roughly double in tonnage, a mothership cost more than five times to build compared to a cruiser.
Rick suspected a mole, someone trusted with highly confidential mission details. Just days before the attack, the Pacific Federation had pulled out all their resources from the missions due to the assassination of their president. As far as he knew, no clues to who killed her were found. It was almost surely someone in her own entourage. That meant the Chinese and perhaps the Orthodox had the ability to plant moles and assassins within the very inner circles of their enemies, a chilling thought.
Admiral van Hoorne’s fleet had not arrived. Rick’s own arrival was just an hour ago. He knew that if there was no news until tomorrow, their mission would be deemed a failure. Losing three quarters of their ships for perhaps ten destroyed enemy wormhole stations was a horrific failure, and it would put the Atlantic Alliance on the defensive unless the Pacific Federation got its act together. The sporadic, guerrilla-like nature of wormhole warfare meant enemy forces could easily penetrate into their territory if they had the correct star maps, without which a random wormhole opening had a reasonably high probability of exiting inside a star, a meteor belt or in the dangerous vicinity of a black hole. But the intelligence abilities of the Chinese that Rick had just witnessed indicated the high likeliness of their possession of such information.
These thoughts started to swim in his head, and he began to get drowsy following the gradual disappearance of adrenalin in his blood after the combat had ended. But he needed to be debriefed about his mission to Command. He decided to make a last effort and get dressed and ready to report. As he stood, he felt his joints click. You’re too old for this, you fool. The old wound on his right shoulder blade started to be felt, despite the fact that there was no scar after tissue regeneration.
The after-combat fatigue was making it increasingly difficult to keep his eyes open as he felt the smooth motion of the gravity lift that would take him to the bridge of his ship. Upon his arrival, his number two, Commander Walker, a big, bearish Scotsman with red hair, vacated the command seat and took his own seat to the right. Rick was dismayed and happy at the same time to see Walker and all his crew looking awake and alert; dismayed because it made him feel old and feeble.
“Fleet 6102 arrived two minutes ago, sir” reported his number two. “Looks like they got their arses kicked proper. They lost two thirds of their ships and the mothership looks as though she’s gonna fall apart any minute now.”
Rick observed the IGN Jerusalem and thought of its captain, Admiral Jenkins. Though he didn’t look formidable with his round shoulders and multiple chins, Jenkins was inherently cautious and that probably saved the fleet.
A flash of green light signalled another wormhole being
opened. Rick looked at the holograph and saw a single Atlantic Alliance mothership exiting before the wormhole closed. The name of the ship, IGN Sword of Michael was painted in black along the white ‘blade’ of the giant sword. ‘So van Hoorne survived?’ thought Rick.
“Looks like only the mothership survived in that fleet” muttered Walker unnecessarily.
In another few seconds, a second wormhole opened and again a lone Atlantic mothership, the IGN Devil’s Repent, appeared. A third wormhole produced a third mothership. Rick opened his eyes, sat upright and gripped the armrest of the command seat.
“To battle stations. Red Alert” ordered Rick, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed his saliva.
Chapter 33: New Kaliningrad
‘Intelligent Aliens are defined by the average Intelligence Quotient level B (humans being A). A test must be carried out with a sample of at least two hundred randomly selected individuals. In the occasion where Intelligence Quotient tests cannot be applied due to cultural, communicational or environmental reasons, an appointed, qualified Alien Intelligence specialist will be deployed to study the local dominant species for at least a period of two Earth months in order to determine their intelligence levels.’ – Charter Convention of Earth, Clause 2.23.A, ‘Definition of Intelligent Aliens’
The female dranipede whisked along at speeds that would make a cheetah blush. Its many armoured segments each hid two pairs of bony legs that moved with blurred quickness. This one had twelve segments, making it quite a large specimen for a female. Paul had seen her being born with four other siblings. They had wriggled and snaked out of their mother’s multiple wombs, only to be abandoned. Paul had chosen her to be his companion. Most of the other boys preferred male dranipedes since they were larger but Paul knew that females were quicker and more durable. One of the litter was neutral, neither male nor female, and destined to become a nurse dranipede whose overwhelming hormonal instincts would make it seek out and eventually adopt and rear newly born young. Nurse dranipedes were useless to the Grey Knights since they were too small to be ridden and their nurturing role was taken over by the young squires. Hence, they went directly to the kitchen.
